A little while ago, I wrote about Tweeconomics. Seems I’m not the only one under the impression that social media has pervaded almost every outward facing facet of modern business. The ROI debate – “Is there?” “Isn’t there?” “Does it matter?” “Do different rules apply?” “How do we adapt our ROI paradigm?” “Is it even possible to calculate?” – has been going on for centuries. OK, maybe not CENTURIES – but it certainly feels like it’s been going on for a while, and with no end in sight. I can’t argue for the validity of this video, and I’m still not convinced of EVERYthing conveyed in it, but for the most part – I love it. What do you think?

First Came Chris Daughtry, Quickly Followed By Weezer, MGMT, Eric Cartman, And Now, IMO, Topping Them All (Except Maybe Cartman’s Rendition, It’s A Tough Call) The One & Only Christopher Walken. What Do They All Have In Common? They’ve All Spoofed Lady Gaga’s Hit Single “Poker Face.”

So…What is it about Lady Gaga, and this song in particular, that lends is self to such memeticmimetics? There is something undeniably unique about The Lady & Her Music. Her Style, Performance, The Catchyness of the tune…all of which make for User Generated Recreations. But it’s rare, and a privilege, when other artists or media producers spoof one’s work. Even in jest, most blatant mockery subtly suggests some degree of respect and admiration. If Family Guy or South Park ever made fun of one of my creations, I’d take it as a compliment.

Marketers & Advertisers Strive To Impart These Qualities On Their Content. To Provide A Template On Which Consumers Can Build, a Body of Material Ripe For The Creative Masses To Restructure, Remix, Reinterpret, Re-contextualize…and spread.

So what is it that she (or her team of producers and publicists) does, to lend her brand to such virality?

When a person hears it [Her Music] you can’t help but admit that it’s catchy and fun. But when you realize what the lyrics are, what you’re singing, it’s embarrassing that you actually enjoy something that sophomoric, so to cope we make fun. [It’s a] Social Defense Mechanism. People find that humorous it’s why she’s successful. She’s crazy and out there, but its fun and funny. It’s being so ridiculous, that it’s entertaining. For Her, Tactful Talentlessness becomes true talent and she’s thus she brings a new dimension, and with it success, to an otherwise superficial music career & by superficial I mean a lack of lyrical and musical depth.

When I asked My Friend & Colleague Jess Greco that same question, she responded:

Historically, pop culture is pop culture for a reason- it is constantly being referenced. She’s original, shes doing things that are slightly ridiculous, and thats what is getting her attention. And these are the things that often turn into the internet memes that we’re so obsessed with nowadays. And a big part of this are the the references, just like The Office and The JK wedding dance video. Why Other Artists & Producers? Maybe Because they want to be part of the phenomenon? I dont know. They want to play off someone else’s attention to get their own? But I feel like that applies to any person, not just celebs.

Personally, I get excited when celebs reference other celebs. It compounds the impact on the consumer/viewer and makes them feel like they’re part of this inside joke.

Could it be that simple? Is this authentic originality engendering producer-to-producer parasitism? Or is this something much more a psychologically complex? Is her brand Built, from the top down, to be so well suited for spoofing and these cultural memes, arguably one of marketing’s holy grails?

When’s the last time you received an email from a store and that actually motivated you to get off your ass and go to the outlet or even spend money on their website. Social Media has slain the Monster of Direct Email Marketing. Not That It Doesn’t Have It’s Spammy Counterparts – Auto-DMs, Facebook Messages From Branded Fan Pages…etc.

Here’s how it’s going to work – You Exist. Online. As Long As I’m AWARE of where you exist (which is another matter altogether), rest assured, if i want to be updated on your company news, I’ll opt it by subscribing to your twitter feed, read your blog, or fan you on Facebook. And then I’ll visit you when I decide. Not the other way around. End Of Story. Disagree with me all you want, it won’t make you any righter. And if it’s not clear that this is the future you’re resisting, just give it a few months.

Brands that don’t embrace Social Media as a way to reach their goals (no, you don’t have to give up) will fail. The purpose of, and results once generated by, email marketing, can still be accomplished – Except now through this new and scary interface call the interwebs. Traditional BROADCAST Advertising still has it’s place. But Email just isn’t one of those. In My Mind, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this way – An Email from McDonald or Starbucks or The Gap (I haven’t thankfully, I’m just arbitrarily choosing widely recognized brands for argument’s sake) is equivolent to the spam I receive about Acai Berry Weight Loss, Penis Enlargement Pills, And Cheap Watches – Garbage.

And I’m being nicer than I should – I’m 24, I’ve seen successful email marketing. But try emailing a 15 year old & they’ll laugh at you. That’s not how people engage brands anymore. Truth. Statistics be damned.

On a less frustrated note, here are some awesome reads you should definitely check out:

This has to be the most brilliant marketing ploy i’ve ever seen. It would definitely have worked better at the initial banking/mortgage crisis & market collapse. But I know of a few traders who will use this every day for the rest of their lives!

David Mullen, in the latest of his daily dose of insight, has opened up the discussion on yet another important topic for many of us experimenting with social media and developing campaigns for clients who are more than a little bit skeptical about venturing into a territory with which they are, for the most part, lost.

There are arguments to both sides of the issue. A “Pilot Program” helps ease the client into this scary and unfamiliar terrain. The downside is that you may not see results or ROI if you don’t commit to a thought-out, long term, strategy. Kind of a catch 22. There is, IMHO, a middle ground. A way to create a small scale, but comprehensive social media attack. The key is to develop a strategy that can be narrowly focused, initially, and then expanded and expounded upon, both in terms of goals and means to achieve those goals, as the data from the first phase can be analysed. Those metrics will provide feedback for you as you grow the initiative from a fine, targeted, endeavor, to a more far reaching and all-encompassing social media presence, and with it, your own unique approach and attitude.

I think it’s more about choosing the right channel – Pick one vehicle – facebook, youtube, twitter, a blog, etc…and focus all efforts on that one medium. This way, you’ve got your pilot program mentality in that you’re not trying to tackle the entire social space in one fell swoop. It’s not overwhelming; you have time to manage and monitor one platform, and thus you can develop a system in which consistancy is maintained.

Additionally, Choosing one medium allows for much easier measurement and analytics, to determine if the effort has delivered and if it’s worthwhile to expand.

Of course, to do this, you also have to Define your primary goal – customer service, marketing, branding, PR…etc. – pick one & stick to it – let your goal be the guiding influence in choosing the most effective social platform and your method for measuring results.

This is my “Pilot Program.” It has longevity, a goal, consistency, and it’s measurable. If it’s deemed to be successful, you can adapt this mini-initiative to other social media, or expand your goals, if desired. Either way, limiting yourself or your brand to 1 goal, 1 platform, 1 campaign is the best, IMHO, form of Pilot Program – insofar as that it has all the elements of a traditional and comprehensive campaign, while keeping things simple enough to act as a test of your needs, capabilities, and suitability for the effectively utilizing these media.

Media, in all its forms – new, old, traditional, print, digital, social, etc. – has evolved to the point where the lines once separating production and consumption, brands and their patrons, outlets and readership, are blurred, if not altogether obliterated. Of this, there is little doubt. But it raises a vast multitude questions that plague many of us who reside in this nebulous field that is Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Communication, Customer Service, and Social Media.

Question #1: Under Whose Aegis (of the aforementioned disciplines) Does The Realm Of Social Media Fall?

Marketers would argue…well, Marketing, for obvious reasons. To those outside the industry, and thus unfamiliar with its nuances, this is often the first inclination. Others might try to woo you to the side of Customer Service, winning you over with tales of happy customers who have had their problems solved upon textually screaming “Help! My PC Crashed,” unknowingly calling forth a veritable army of Dell’s finest minds who scour twitter in search of such opportunities. As a Publicist & Digital Strategist, I would have posited only weeks ago, and still might, that Social Media and platforms like Twitter & Facebook, should be run, or at the very least, curated and moderated, under the auspices of the Public Relations Department or Agency. Why PR? Because Public Relations is about defining and promoting a brand through said brand’s message, values, and principals. While traditional media was a one way vehicle, social media, by definition, is an open conversation. Public Relations professionals can, and do, continue to take that message and engage consumers and mass audiences, but now on the level of the individual or micro-community, as this degree of interactivity is presently expected of, though not necessarily delivered by, most brands. The popularity of blogging and platforms like Twitter, built on an ongoing public dialogue, allow publicists and digital strategist to identify, interject, and engage those who would be interested in learning about and associating with the brand’s values and core beliefs. Facilitating this discussion, in my opinion, should fall to those who have been doing so until now…publicists.

Question #2: Who Made The New York Times (or WSJ, CNN…) King?

That is to say, we live in an era characterized by the public’s ability and desire to produce and disseminate their own content, whether via Blogging, Tweeting, Facebook, YouTube, FriendFeed…etc. So, why do brands still rely on traditional media outlets to broadcast their message, insisting that these are the more powerful channels? Obviously, most reputable organizations have, at this point, begun reaching out to bloggers and utilizing social sites. In this light, a Daily News article begs the question “Will it matter who you watch anymore?”

My answer would be a resounding NO. In fact, for people and brands alike, I’d go so far as to pose a corollary that may be even more telling of our times, “Why should I watch them, when they should be watching me!?”

I recently attended GasPedal’s Blogwell Conference in Chelsea Piers, at which I was privy to the social media insights and experiments being conducted by some of today’s most recognized national brands, including, Microsoft, GE, Coke, Nokia, and Johnson & Johnson.

GE struck me as really having taken advantage of some of these sentiments, in the creation of their GEReports website, which acts as a hybrid between blog & media outlet. The site is designed to serve as an additional voice for GE and a portal for niche audiences to find relevant, interesting information – an innovative and seemingly effective way to employ social media and capitalize on the public’s unwavering desire to be heard and have their specific interests catered to. Yes – I ended a sentence in a preposition…deal with it.

After fighting my way through the crowd, I was able to catch GE’s Communications & Social Media Specialist, Megan Parker who kindly informed me that one of the foci of the site, and the primary basis for both content and measuring success, were the comments posted by their readership…and I thought “Brilliant.”

I pondered the connection between these questions and concepts for a while, implicitly understanding a significant relationship existed between them, but unable to articulate it, even to myself. That is, until I came across a series of blog posts rallying the PR industry to step up and embrace the evolving landscape of media. Almost simultaneously, though perhaps not coincidently, I stumbled onto a twitter conversation about “People Relations.”

“Shannon Paul suggested that integrating social media into communications strategies was putting the “P” back in PR, renewing a focus on public instead of media. I agree with Shannon a bit, but wanted to up the ante.

Yes, I know that “public” refers to groups of people, but that still feels a bit cold to me. This is more about changing our mindset, for those of us who need it. People expect more personal relationships and one-to-one conversations. People want to share their dreams and fears. People want to be heard. People want connections.”

I say, we take this one step further. These once disparate, yet intimately intertwined and overlapping, arenas of PR, Communication, Customer Service, Advertising, Marketing and Social Media, are now coalescing and ‘People Relations’ is the resulting amalgamation. A new industry is developing, borne of necessity & experimentation; Social Media agencies, in order to actualize their eponymous mission, must become People Relations agencies, and they must draw lessons from their predecessors in order to succeed.

The New York Times & CNN are no longer the kings of content and the importance of blogger relations, so recently the epitome of successful digital marketing, is now losing meaning (though not value), as everyone’s voice becomes equally valid. I don’t need to be an avid or established blogger to tweet a scathing, 140 character, early adopter’s review of some new tech gadget that can result in the same damage as a comprehansive, half page analysis David Pogue might give the same product in the New York Times a month later. As soon as I have an opinion on anything, I have a plethora of media vehicles – textual, graphical, audio/visual, even musical – at my disposal by which to express myself.

One does not need to be a veteran video journalist to capture groundbreaking events on a phone and upload it to YouTube (or snap a shot of a plane in the Hudson River and ‘twitpic’ it before major news outlets are aware of what’s (not) flying. Not to mention the ever growing mass of new media celebrities such as lifecaster, Jill Hanner, comedian/musicians Rhett & Link, and the TMI group, whose show was recently picked up by an NBC outlet, all of whom must have ventured to, at some point, ask themselves, whether implicitly or explicitly, “Why rely on Big Media to broadcast our content when we have the means to do so ourselves?”

People Relations means catering to each and every individual – it means that marketers, publicists, customer relations specialists, and advertisers must understand – The single person is no longer a small fish; individual voices rival, or have the potential to rival, even the largest, most authoritative of the old media outfits. This is why & how brands should employ twitter. Not by barraging innocent followers with an endless stream of promotions and marketing propaganda; nor should they limit themselves to mere customer service. They must learn to treat each and every individual, to the extent that it’s feasible and cost effective, as if they were the editors of the Wall Street Journal, the way tech start-ups have come to treat TechCruch’s Michael Arrington.

The sense of entitlement associated with today’s youth and adolescents will only grow with each new generation. Publishing giants will flail and fall, and eventually fail. And while the rest of us wax nostalgic, this ever-growing legion of young producers will simply proclaim “New York Times? I AM the New York Times.”

Social media is new and it can be scary to some people, especially to those working within larger organizations where everything must be tightly controlled. Below are some of the stupidest arguments I heard against starting a social media program.

1. Our competitors don’t have a Facebook page.

Now, do you wait until your competitor comes out with a cutting edge product before your launch your own? No! You need to beat your competitors out of the gate and prove what a dynamic business you are.

2. Our customers don’t care about social media.

How do you know? Granted, some of your customers might not care about social media, but a simple search will most likely reveal a lot of them do. Using social media tools like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, which are all free by the way, to generate interesting content they can’t get anywhere else will make most people care about your social media program.

3. We need to control our message very closely and if we participate we will lose control.

The answer is bordering on cliché but you never had control of your message. I bet the gist of your message is that your product or service is the best thing since sliced bread. Guess what, every company says that and if all you care about is “talking at” your customer and putting out carefully crafted marketing speak you are missing a huge opportunity.

4. I’m afraid of negative criticism.

If you have a dissatisfied customer they are sharing their distaste for your product or service whether you are involved in social media or not. Taking advantage of all the free tools available to monitor discussion about your company or products allows you to identify anything negative quickly and rectify it before it grows exponentially.

5. I don’t think we should be doing anything groundbreaking. Let’s stick to what we know, print advertising and press releases.

I didn’t make this up. This was actually said by someone and I have no response to it. Stick to what you know while everyone else passes you by. Doesn’t make much sense does it?

I’m sure there are a lot more stupid reasons people do not want to engage in social media, but remember, if you hear any of these they come out of fear. Don’t give up! Keep pushing for it. Start small and with a specific measurable goal and see what happens from there. Keep track of companies who are making a big splash in social media and share it with your team with examples of what your company could do to get the same effect. It’s worth the effort!

Amanda Is A PR/Marketing Specialist in the Greater Boston Area. She’s a Fan of Social Media, PR, and Marketing Strategies that Make Sense.